Beautiful Barbados

Now this is what I am talking about.  The winter in Barbados, some time from December through March, is meant to be pleasant.  Gorgeous warm sun, blue skies, azure sea and beaches at which sight one just sighs and relaxes.  While it has rained nearly every evening, something not typical of this "dry" season, the morning sun breaks through to provide a beautiful day with nice breezes.  The sea has been calm with just enough surf to make it fun here on the West Coast, something we have definitely tried to take advantage of on Didier's days off.  This, I will miss of Barbados.


Last year at this time, it was already getting hella hot, the sun laserbeaming through your skin as soon as it was approaching the top of the sky and our house, not the best place for cooling down, could reach sweat lodge temps by early morning.  But these days, we have had the windows and doors opened with a cross breeze that puts this huffy puffy mum on the verge of sleep or at least lulled to a state of calm and has Lily proclaiming that she is cold.  If you can believe that.


One of our new goldfish, Lemon Shortcake, picked up last weekend at the Brighton Farmers' Market and still alive five days later, thank you Jesus (RIP Plum Shortcake), is loving the atmosphere and the billowing curtains.  This past Sunday afternoon, we went in search of the "Lobster man," a guy who dives for the blue spiny lobster on the sea, sometimes as deep as 150 feet with his snorkeling gear, to see if he'd caught anything that morning and while we'd not found him, the drive to his little spot was lovely.  We'll get him yet. 


As I have spent a little more time in the car, I have passed cricket matches, football/soccer pick up games, Sports Day Color Wars, kids flying kites, along with the usual liming crowds at rum shops and chattel houses.  These images will stay with me when Barbados just becomes part of my history and no longer my present.  I know it is coming because I have made some sort of peace with the place.  And that is usually one of my signs.  We've got guests coming in March, for nearly then entire month and this time, I want to share with them the secrets and treasures I have discovered rather than the things I despise or that kick me into a frenzy of stress and frustration.  There is much that is beautiful about Barbados and like a traveller getting ready to leave a tourist destination, I can look at the time here with nostalgia, if not longing, and recall images of my babies learning to swim here, learning to stand, to walk, to talk (Virginie), to read, to speak properly and politely (Lily and Virginie), and chatting with a tiny Bajan accent that will follow them wherever we go next.

This is the place where Lily's memories are strongest, where she will recall her first school, her garden, pool, walks on the beach, collecting shells and coral each weekend, sunny afternoons liming about.  Though Virginie, still a baby really, won't have much memory of it, the countless photos and videos will prove to her one day that she was indeed an island baby.   Barbados was just a stepping stone for us (not sure where we are stepping to, but we are stepping), but for the girls, it was truly a place called home and in their eyes and their hearts, it was beautiful.  Barbados.


(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.